What began in Naperville Community Unit School District 203 could not stop there. Faculty from the Department of Educational Technology, Research and Assessment interacted with around 200 students in 2021 and 2022 to observe how working with LEGO educational robots might stimulate
Read morePhotos: ETRA at STEM Fest
Several representatives from the Department of Educational Technology, Research and Assessment staffed Booth 33 at NIU’s STEM Fest 2022, held Oct. 15. “Our VR and AR educational games were a great hit!” Chair Wei-Chen Hung said. “Kids and parents stood in long
Read moreHard fun: Naperville children provide data on robots, computational thinking
Some faculty in the Department of Educational Technology, Research and Assessment (ETRA) were busy this summer writing about robots – and children. Can children program robots to sort differently sized objects for recycling? Can they write code for robots to simulate an
Read moreUniversity Honors salutes Melanie Koss with its Great Professor Award for 2022
Some people are born into their callings. Consider Melanie Koss. “I just grew up loving books. I don’t ever remember a time when I wasn’t a book lover. I learned to read very young, and even before I learned to read, I
Read moreYanghee Kim assists UNESCO efforts to prepare children for future world
That the world is changing rapidly comes as no surprise to anyone who’s dialed a rotary phone attached to a wall or wearily rose from a comfortable couch to change the channel. But the relentless and breakneck pace at which technology is
Read moreSTEM Read Summer Institute prepares educators to bring books, curiosity to life
Melanie Koss donned a headpiece that gave her deer ears, reclined motionless on a couch in the Gabel Hall Learning Center, closed her eyes and played the role of a deceased doe. And that wasn’t even the strangest sight at July’s NIU
Read moreLearn-IT explores future of teaching tech
Science fiction fans call May 4 “Star Wars Day” – as in, “May the Fourth Be With You” – but that particular Saturday this year centered on science reality for 120 regional teachers and instructional technology specialists. NIU’s Department of Educational Technology,
Read moreSTEM Read Institute sparks educators
Macy Gray’s journey as a teacher began at Mayatan Bilingual School, a non-profit in Honduras where she taught sixth-graders. When she returned to Illinois this summer to begin a new job this fall teaching sixth- and seventh-graders at Chicago’s Altus Academy, the
Read moreSTEM Read Summer Institute to teach educators to transfer books ‘off the page’
Bringing books to life – transporting an author’s words and worlds from typewritten pages into physical spaces – marvelously rouses the passion for reading within young readers. Just imagine your excitement if you learned that Tad Lincoln had lost his famous father’s
Read moreLEARN-IT conference exposes educators to instructional tech
Advances in technology come so quickly and frequently that it’s nearly impossible to stay on top of the latest innovations and applications. Yet for teachers, and for IT professionals who work in schools, the integration of technology to enhance learning carries a
Read moreProject Slide
Students in their second professional semester (diversity block) will have the opportunity to collaborate with 5th grade students and STEM teachers from Golfview Elementary School in CUSD 300, Carpentersville, Illinois, for two days. This collaboration will provide science literacy hands-on experiences in
Read moreETRA to host Nov. 19 professional development
The Department of Educational Technology, Research and Assessment will offer professional development presentations from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 19. Authors and professionals will discuss their expertise and experiences in the fields of copyright, STEM and Maker Spaces. Schedule 8:30
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